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A little music nerdery: 'God of our Fathers' and 'O Canada'

6 Jul 2025

This morning before church I was listening to the organist practice, and while I knew from reading the bulletin ahead of time that the processional was God of our Fathers, when I heard the organ music my brain wanted to run with it instead as O Canada. At the time I was puzzled why, but then when I actually sang the hymn while processing, I realized what it is: the second line of both songs is nearly identical in melody and harmonic progression.

I dug up sheet music for both of them in the same key just to belabor the illustration. Here’s God of our Fathers:

And here’s O Canada:

My music theory is rusty, but in the second line (“Leads forth in beauty all the starry band” and “True patriot love in all of us command”, respectively), they start on the I, hit the iii, and then the V - V/V - V cadence with almost the same melody. The Canadian anthem does sneak a transitional V/iii chord in as some passing snazziness, but on the whole: I will forgive my brain for mentally continuing on “with glowing hearts we see…” rather than “of shining worlds in splendor…”.

Thus endeth the music nerdery.

(“Thanks be to God!”)

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Hi, I'm Chris.

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